Paint defects on every panel, rust warranty???

Hi everyone! I have a 2015 Ecodiesel Limited in Black

I got it a few weeks ago and then after getting it home I went to do a nice wash and detail of the car and found nibs and bumps all over the vehicle.
They are small some the size of a grain of sand and some up to like 2mm but are definitely from the factory and under/in the paint.

The dicey part is that this truck has more than 36k miles so it is no longer in the 36/36 warranty. The previous owner who was a 92 woman paid lots of money for a 7yr/100mi max care warranty but unfortunately it doesnt cover paint.
A few of these bumps have a crack in them and show the signs of rust on the edges of the crack.
After closely examining the truck and taping off all the defects, I counted 86!!! on a $60k msrp truck?!!! and Im sure there are more if I spend more time looking. They are on every panel except the bumper(I have matching paint bumper not chrome), which after a little bit of research I found out is painted in a totally different location. My truck was painted in the Warren factory.
I recently took it to a dealership and expressed my frustration as it was such a horrible paint job. He seems to be on my side and is helping me make a claim with Mopar care. The vehicle is in warranty period for the rust warranty which is 5yr, unlimited mileage. He asked for me to get an estimate from a local paint shop on a complete repaint.

I plan on dropping off this estimate tomorrow but I wanted to reach out and see if anyone else had issues with paint on most of their panels and what the resolution was. The paint guys (went to 3 shops) all expressed that painting a truck properly is a pain in the ass as you will have to get all lights, decals, etc off the truck and remove the bed as well to paint all areas including doors for the jams. They mentioned that getting proper fitting after is difficult and that this model truck will likely look the best if I can find a different one that comes out done well from the factory.

I doubt they will replace my truck because of this but after I saw my estimate maybe it would be a better economical option if mopar's cost on a truck is lower.

Does anyone know what the actual build cost is of a ecodiesel truck?
Would love to hear from anyone with this kind of warranty issue and what the resolution was, Thanks.

Those seem to be fairly large defects. Are you sure the truck didn't have body work at some point?

I have one bad one. Mines under the hood. gonna get it fixed just so it doesn't rust. Non the less it's not something you wanna see when you spend that kind of money. Yours seems to be a lot worse. Hope the dealer does something

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Wow that is terrible. My truck only has only one. Your truck is unacceptable. I feel like even ram wouldn't have released this truck like this I feel like it was repainted without an insurance claim that's real amateur work


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There have been complaints about the paint work at the Warren Plant for years. Some bad paint jobs and some even worse. Yours in one of the worst I've seen. IMHO if you find a GOOD PROFESSIONAL painter, he can give you a better complete paint job than any factory paint job. Realignment of the body panels should be able to be done by most competent body men. Please realize that this is by no means a simple or cheap process. A complete paint job nowadays can run 5k or more----depending on the paint it can be a lot more.
Jay

As others have said "wow"!! I can see that repair costing big money. I would think it would need a full body paint job because I can't imagine them being able to make that many small repairs without having the paint look "uneven". Tell us how it works out.

There is a zero percent chance FCA will replace the truck especially as you bought it used.

I cannot get my head around this two year old truck with more than 36K miles driven by a 92 year old woman.

Good luck, I think you learned an important lesson when buying used, look hard at the vehicle.

My 2016 Rebel has a few and my 2014 Sport also had a few. The paint job on the trucks from the Warren plant are terrible and have been complained about for years. On my black 2014 Sport I had 3 of my 4 doors without black paint on the bottom....just clear coated. I had it repainted under warranty.

you 100% sure its a factory paint job?

Hi guys thank you for all the responses Ill try to address all the comments:

To everyone curious about if it is original factory paint: Yes it is 100% factory paint.

As for the first owner she lives in PA and it was suppose to be a gift for her grandson but due to grades or whatever he didnt get it so she drove it for a while. She lives about 100 miles from her daughter and grandson so she would make that drive often and while at home she used the truck to help with 'meals on wheels' so that is how she put on the 18k a year.
I was only looking at trucks <36k due to the whole warranty issue but she paid an additional like $3k for the maximum care warranty through mopar so at that point I felt like even though it was over 36k miles I was planning on buying an extended warranty anyways so I was stoked.

As for the paint clearly I agree with everyone it is BAD!

To Sir John: You said you got it repainted under warranty. Did they let you pick the shop? Did it look good afterward? was it a full repaint or just the bad areas?

To HS Custom: That looks similar to the spots that are on the outside of my truck. I wish mine was just under the hood!

Ok on to the update:

The warranty manager at my local dealer told me to go get an estimate and he would help me submit this claim. He also said that I should get a estimate for a complete repaint as it would be easy to tell if they had to try to blend in that many spots.
I left the warranty office around 2pm last friday thinking I could get to a few shops and get a couple estimates in before closing time.
My thought was a full repaint estimate will be very costly but shouldnt take long to write up at all. I mean there is no damage to straighten out or dents just strip, sand, paint blah blah. Boy was I wrong.... first two shops I took it to straight up told me they dont do full repaints. Third shop was a recommendation from second one and he made it pretty clear he could do a full repaint but he doesnt feel he could do a better job??!!

I straight up laughed out loud when he said that... nothing makes you not want to do business with a company more than them being brutally honest saying they would do a terrible job. I guess Im glad he was honest.

After this I went home and did some research on painting black cars/trucks and I learned a lot about how they are super labor intensive because they show everything. Also having to remove all decals, doors, and even the bed off the frame. I looked up to see what google had for aftermarket paint shops that specialize in black paint jobs. I found a guy in LA that was more than happy to do it and then after I sent him photos of my truck he called me and explained why it would be such a PIA but hey with the right price he would do it.
It is his bread and butter and got a write up in Car and Driver about being one of the best at black paint jobs. At $24,000 haha it better be a show car at that point.
The break down was only $3,000 material cost and then the rest was labor.
He wrote me up an estimate and I was shocked but dont mind if Mopar is going to pay for it... I doubt they will but I want to see what they will say.
By the way the painter if you want to see his site is mickspaint.com

I dropped off this estimate with warranty director at my branch and he got a good giggle out of it but he was actually a bit curious like me to what they would say so he submitted it. Said I should hear back late next week so Ill keep you guys posted.

If anyone else comes across this thread and has had a repaint under warranty Id love to hear about it; if it was a complete repaint and if you are happy with it? Any one use rust warranty? outcome?
Thanks.
Phil

Was this a private sale or dealer

ScottFL said:

There is a zero percent chance FCA will replace the truck especially as you bought it used.

I cannot get my head around this two year old truck with more than 36K miles driven by a 92 year old woman.

Good luck, I think you learned an important lesson when buying used, look hard at the vehicle.

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Yep, I will be shocked if you get anything out of FCA period.
2nd owner. Also paint warranty it has to be rusted through.
I hope I am wrong for your sake, but for FCA to cover this you would have to be original owner, probably within the first 12 months of ownership.
Let us know how it turns out, good luck.

I can't believe you cannot find someone easily that would want that job. I guess I thought they would make good money on a full repaint. Black is the worst to paint. My uncle owned his own body shop before he died. When I was redoing my first vehicle which was a 1986 Ram charger he specifically said do not paint it black. Since it is your first paint job do white it is like looking into a blizzard and will hide most of the errors. He was right I sucked at painting and did so with rattle cans I believe it was something like 30 cans to do the whole thing and I didn't own a mask so that was very dumb!
Good luck man I am excited to see if they do it. If I was you I would just linex the whole truck if they won't cover it.

Here is another update for you guys.
I am pretty irritated that no one in the Ram Mopar customer service department wants to step up and help me with this issue as it looks bad on them that they let a vehicle to this trim level get sold with all these defects.
I have done everything they have asked and I am at another standstill. The latest thing was that since the dealer got the initial denial letter from business department that they deferred me to the 800 number to see if they could help me further. I spoke with a man named “Todd” who did give me a bit of the run around stating the same thing that it is over the 36/36 warranty that there is nothing they can do. But after I gave much more detail that these pimple like defects some show rust and that eventually they would rust through then fitting still in the rust warranty which is 5yr unlimited mileage and it would be much easier and less costly to fix this issue now rather than down the road when the panels rust through he started trying to find a way they could help me.
He said that since the initial report that got rejected at the dealer level claimed that the photos that came in they were stating that the paint job was not done by them. Todd told me that if I could take it to a Dodge/Ram dealership that had a body shop in it that they could do a digital paint depth gauge test and figure out if it is in fact a factory paint job or if it is a repaint. Like Ive posted earlier I am 100% sure this is a factory paint job but I am willing to jump through some hoops to make sure they know that. Obviously I could go to an independent paint shop in my town but to make sure Im not getting a biased opinion they wanted me to go to one of their body shops. Unfortunately for me I discovered they don’t have many of them anymore where there is a body shop in the dealership. The closest one to me was about 1.5 hour drive away.
I got some time off work on a Monday and made sure the shop manager was in and drove down to have him inspect the truck. He was a nice gentleman down at Rocket town Dodge Ram and grabbed his digital gauge and we went out to my truck. He did notice the marks I had taped off and said that it does happen from time to time but should have been corrected before it left factory. He measured the paint in many areas, hood, roof, doors, tailgate, and inside door jams, and door frame areas. He actually noticed some areas that I had not noticed before in the door frame area that were mistakes. The rear door frame area has a lot of extra over spray that shouldn’t be like that. He suggested that I get a representative from Dodge out to go over vehicle. Im not exactly sure what that means but he made it sound like the dealership doesn’t have anyone that can do that but that they can send someone out. This is just baffling to me because everyone who has looked at it clearly sees that it was a poor paint job that should have never left the factory. Yes I may be a bit picky or have better eye sight than the previous owner who was 92 but that doesn’t excuse them for a paint job with the defects that once I point them out to anyone in person or in photos agrees it shouldn’t be there.
The manager of the shop put his signature on a business card with the range of paint depths and gave his expert opinion that it was in deed a factory paint job. I was there a whole 30 mins and then back on the road for an hour and a half to my hometown San Luis Obispo.
The following day I called the same 800 number and asked if I could speak to Todd again and finish our conversation now that I have completed that last step of certifying that it is in fact a factory paint. Unfortunately they could not connect me to “Todd” again but a lady named Caitlin tried to help me out. I told her what Todd asked of me and now I have proper documentation from Rocket Town Dodge to prove it is a factory paint job. She said she had no idea why Todd would ask me to do that and she cant help me. Clearly I was upset but I did not get very far with her at all. I have sent an email to my local Warranty Director at the Dealership to see if he can help me with the next step and it has been 4 days. I may just drive in there today. This issue may not get any help at all.

I'm heading back to the dealer with my 2017. I developed an unusual scratch in the front bumper. Can't figure out what happend since it doesn't look like any other scratch I've ever seen.

I've found about 8 total on my 2018 black out edition. They are going to fix them when they repaint my tailgate, which has a faint purple streak running across the top of it. Guess what? Warren plant too!

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gotime26 said:

it was suppose to be a gift for her grandson but due to grades or whatever he didnt get it

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Lol.

Unfortunately Warren produces some pretty **** paint jobs from time to time. I dont know if some of these get missed or if they just say to hell with it on some of the really ***** ones and just let them through, but its a shame. I have read Warren has one of the most out dated paint booths in the industry. It will be a welcome change when the 2019 Rams start coming out of Sterling Heights, though they had better rebuild Warren if they are planning on having the most expensive next gen Jeeps come out of there.

As much as I would have loved to see my HD built here in Detroit, it was actually kind of nice knowing I didnt have to worry about my truck going through the Warren paint process lol. I couldnt find a single defect in my paint job.

I really doubt as a second owner past the bumper to bumper warranty Chrysler is going to do much. Hope I am wrong though. Smiley had the best solution, have it linexed.

My 2013 Ram 1500 was built at the Warren Plant. It developed a few of these on the body after purchase, as well as had the paint flake off only a month after purchase. I took it in, initially the paint was denied but then they accepted it and painted a few sections of the truck.

There was a guy on here who was going through this with me at the same time. He had to have entire body panels repainted. It also required some representative to come and inspect the truck before approval. It was no easy task.

With my 2013, they repainted the sections and they matched fine with no noticeable issues afterwards. This will be no easy task to get Ram to correct.

Good luck!


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